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In the age of “always on” and “on-the-go,” small business owners who haven’t thought about how their websites function on a mobile phone are in danger of being left behind. Fifty-five percent of smartphone owners use their phones to go online, and 57 percent wouldn’t recommend a website they had trouble accessing on their phone.

So, how can you optimize your website for mobile browsing without the hassle and cost of a developer or engineer? We’ve compiled some helpful tips and guidelines in the infographic below. Just click to enlarge!

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Want to make your small business look big? Here’s what customers are looking for when they visit

So you want your website to make you look big. But the business experts I talked to recently say small is cool with customers, too. Small businesses, they say, have a personality, flavor and sensibility that big businesses can’t match. And when it comes to what you put on your website, they urge: Don’t be afraid to tout your smallness.

“Small businesses can have more fun with their sites, more so than large corporations,” says Alice Bredin, president of Bredin Business Information, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that helps large business-to-business companies market themselves to small businesses. “A small-business site needs to include something that reflects the creativity and personality of its owner.”

Maybe you’re a couple working side-by-side in a spare bedroom or a fourth-generation entrepreneur working to someday hand it over to a son or daughter. Maybe you’re putting yourself through grad school. Or you operate from a remote site in the hinterlands and you use only recycled materials. Presented well on a home page and/or an “About Us” section, all of these may have unique selling points to customers.

“People want character; it has meaning,” adds Kelly Cutler, chief executive of Marcel Media, a Chicago-based Web advisory firm. “How folksy you get depends on your industry.” An attorney may not want to project an image of him or her working on a leather sofa with a dog curled up nearby. But that may work well for an artist or craftsperson, even an architect, Cutler and others say.

Whatever your industry, “Tell your story online,” Cutler says. Customers want to know who you are and, if you lead a team, who is on it and what they do. “You must talk about the team,” Bredin seconds. “When there is nothing [on your site] about who you are or who’s on your team, people wonder about whether you are a good company to buy from.”

Here are the 10 most important things these experts say customers want to know:

How your business is unique
Answer the question “Who are you?” as interestingly and compellingly (and honestly) as possible. This includes writing management bios that mention your expertise, years of experience and any unique attributes or details that may set you apart from others.You need to answer, Bredin says, “What is unique about your business? Why should I buy from you?” This is missing from many business sites because the owners haven’t done the strategic thinking necessary to figure that out, she says.

Be concise, too, Cutler adds. “You don’t need to write a novel.”

A clear sense of what your company offers
“It’s incredible how many sites you visit and you’re not sure what the company offers,” Bredin says. Make it a priority on your home page to provide at least general information about your products and/or services, with links to specifics on a Products page.Many service-oriented companies, Cutler says, are concerned about divulging too much information about their offerings, for competitive reasons. Some also feel that consumers will have no reason to contact them by phone if they get all they need from the website. “There’s a balance that needs to be reached” in giving the potential customer enough info to make a buying decision, she says. More often than not, consumers will not contact a company for the missing product information–they’ll just move on to a competitor.

Contact information, including a phone number and physical location
This may seem like a no-brainer, but many companies are purposely vague about their location. Some prefer to do all of their business online and see no need to publish an address or phone number. Others are home-based or they worry that giving a street address or hometown will somehow hinder them.”This is a must, and it’s one small way of building credibility and trust” with the consumer, says Wayne Porter, co-founder of ReveNews, an online marketing publication, and former senior director of research at FaceTime, a business security solutions provider. “A phone number, a street address and even pictures go a long way toward building credibility.”

Showing a physical location, even one that no one will ever visit, comforts a customer that your business is real and legitimate, Bredin says. Provide a phone number that maps to that location, rather than just an 800 number, she advises.

Third-party validation
This means customer testimonials, client lists, case studies, awards and recognition you’ve received, positive news clippings and the like. Potential customers indeed want to know who you do business with, and what current customers have to say about their experiences. Such items “forge the underpinnings of trust,” Porter says.Client lists are especially important if your customers are businesses. “If you’ve got some big-name customers, people like to see that,” Cutler says. But make sure you get approval from those you list as clients, she adds.

Porter adds that having a presence on social networking sites and blogs, especially those serving your industry, is an increasingly popular form of validation among customers. “Social networking now has strong validation,” he says.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
SSL is an encryption system that helps protect the privacy of data exchanged between a customer and a website. If you have an e-commerce site that takes credit card information, customers want to know that their sensitive data is encrypted. Get SSL if you don’t have it. If you do, let customers know that and about any other safeguards you proactively take.

Ease of use and navigation
If people can’t find it, they can’t buy it. Porter advises keeping sites “crisp, clean, and easy to navigate,” but also for site owners to study traffic and usage patterns to adjust their sites based on what visitors are coming for. “The ability to search a site is very important,” he says. “Businesses should study their search data to see if there are trends and what to make front and center.”

Clear guidance on your processes
Let customers know, step-by-step, important things such as how to order–and where to go and what to do should something happen out of the ordinary. Customers also want to know your shipping costs and procedures and how they can get status reports. (Don’t list your shipping costs and procedures after people enter their credit card information, Cutler urges.) Last but not least, customers want to know how you handle complaints and problems, return procedures and whether you have a money-back guarantee.Your processes can be described in a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page or separate “how to order,” shipping and/or confirmation pages. Include a way customers can contact your business or fulfillment agency for more information.

An ability to give feedback
Encourage feedback about your products and services, your ordering process and your site in general, by providing a feedback mechanism–either feedback forms or e-mail links. Not every small business prefers to offer this, in some cases because of resource constraints. “You definitely want to look at how and what feedback to gather, and you should consider offering an incentive or perk [to the customer],” Porter says. “You might get some good stories to feature on your site or in your blog.”

Clear calls to action
Customers want signs or buttons in order to act, be it “Buy now” or “Sign up for our newsletter” or “Click here for more information.” But many small-business sites don’t provide calls to action or they don’t present them clearly enough, Cutler says. “This is one of the biggest things that nags me,” she says. “If you have a captive audience, this is the time to grab them!”

Special offers and personalization
By personalizing a sale with a special offer, incentive or coupon, small businesses can gain an edge on their bigger counterparts, Porter says. “This can be as simple as a hand-written thank-you note, free gift wrap services or a special offer for repeat business.”Having a personalized touch,” he says, “is something small businesses can do that many big businesses can’t.”

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

The U.S. thrives based on the millions of jobs created by small business owners. Although these small businesses play such a vital role in our economy, a huge amount of risk surrounds new ventures that makes most prospective entrepreneurs hesitant to jump on board for just any promising idea.

Nearly 95 percent of new ventures will close within the first five years of operation. Essentially, these owners lack the business acumen that is all but required in today’s business environment for success and longevity. Having knowledge of how to successfully and efficiently market your product can take you a long way in your industry, so keep the tips provided in this infographic, like starting small and knowing your market, in mind when you hammer out your strategy for success.

Shareable Facts and Stats

40% of small businesses are profitable.

95% of new ventures fail within the first 5 years.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Every company wants to engage and grab the attention of their viewers, but how can you do that?

Almost every site you go on, visiters are bombarded with something. Whether its fancy text, a ton of text or even graphics everywhere.

Keep your site simple, don’t let your visitors lose site as to why they came to your website in the first place. One of the top reasons why bounce rates are so high is because visitors are overwhelmed with the amount of information being placed in front of them.

A great way to introduce your company and brand to your viewers, upon visiting your site is with an introductory video. According to The Deep End, “a website has ten seconds to capture a visitor’s attention before losing them forever“. A video is just the thing you need to keep them engaged and on your site.

3 Benefits of an Introductory Video

Your homepage leaves an impression on your visitors, so what do you want that impression to be? It should be amazing, make them want to keep coming back. Just remember to keep your video between 1-2 minutes, no one is going to want to watch an hour video.

Why video is valuable:

Improved user engagement

Brand awareness

Search engine optimization

The impact of videos can be seen, especially since your visitors attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. With the right script, you can maintain the attention of your visitors after those 8 seconds.

Informational

There is so much information on your site, with an introductory video, it’s an easy and interesting way to provide your target audience and visitors with an understanding of what the company does without them having to read through a bunch of text. Still not sure if you should add a video to your homepage? tmg Custom Media, says that “60% of respondents said they would watch video previous to reading text on the same webpage, and 22% said they generally liked watching video more than browsing text for examining business information”.

You can provide information with your homepage video by:

Summarizing who the company is

Explaining your product or service

Explain your terminology

Engage and Connect with Viewers

The main objective of your introductory video is to get your visitors to engage and connect. The best way to do that is by telling them what its like to work with you and the members of your company. And a great way to show people what its like to work with you is through your personality. All that text on your website makes conveying the personality of your company limited. Whereas videos give you an opportunity to show viewers exactly how you look, sound and act. What a great way to project your core values. Visitors and other companies want to know, are you young and fun? Bold and assertive? You can answer their questions about your personality and the culture of your company through your introductory video. Another benefit of using video, is being able to reach out to your visitors in a more personal manner, really let them get to know you.

Now that you’ve told them about your company and they understand your culture, you can further engage and connect with each visitor by showcasing people using your product or service.

User engagement is achieved through:

Perception

Appraisal of meaning

Evaluation of meaning

Emotional response

Give them Direction

Do your visitors know what to do next after landing on your homepage? Sometimes they have no idea where to even start. With your video you can provide each visitor with some sense of direction. You may have talked about something that interested them. This especially comes in handy when showing people using your product or when mentioning how your service can bring them results. They will want to learn more about that product or service.

Something interesting and different that some companies have implemented into their introductory video is lead capture forms. Everyone wants to generate more leads, some companies actually ask you to enter your email to continue watching a video. According to Unbounce.com, ”Approximately 30% of page visitors watch your introductory video and 50% of those viewers watch the video in its entirety“. Another added benefit of adding a video is that sites that actually had an introductory video on their homepage saw a 10% increase in their conversion rates.

With your video encourage visitors to:

Visit other parts of your site

Share your video through social media

Act on some next steps that were mentioned in the video

If you still need some convincing, check out these six brands that created amazing introductory videos that will grab your attention and reel you in.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

As a small business, your website is a vital piece of your marketing and branding efforts. Visitors are coming to your website for a specific reason, and you want to ensure that you answer their questions and use your website to sell your product or service.

If you get your website designed wrong, you can easily lose thousands of dollars initially, and ultimately lose even more money in potential revenue that you could be making from a well designed, properly functioning website.

Grow your bottom line by avoiding many of these common mistakes among business owners:

1. Putting urgency over understanding your target market.

Instead of focusing on getting your website done as soon as possible, you must first research your target audience in your specific market. Then, design your website around your research.

For instance, if your target market is older, perhaps the font size should be larger. Or if your product is geared towards a younger demographic, then you need to think about catering your site to be smartphone compatible.

You’re going to have to determine where should your users go once they get to your site? That question is easily answered if you know your market.

2. Design is too busy or flashy.

My company, Ciplex, is a web design and development company, and we know that in order to be successful on the Internet you need to focus on marketing your website — not a flashy design. Your design should not just be focused on bringing users there, but also getting them to the right place once they reach your homepage.

Plus, flashy websites don’t look good on mobile phones or tablets, and a large majority of Internet users now visit websites from these wireless devices.

Remember: when a visitor comes to your website, they probably already know what they want out of it. If within three seconds they can’t figure out what to do next, you might need to go back to the drawing board.

3. No clear call to action.

What do you want users to do once they’ve found your website? Do you want them to buy your product, contact you, or subscribe to your business e-newsletter? You need to tell visitors what the next step is and when (ideally, now!). Your content should answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” and then the call to action tells them what to do next.

4. Paying too little or too much.

You don’t know how many times people come to my company after they’ve hired a cheap designer, let them make business decisions that are poor, and ended up with a horrible product. At the same time, companies get distracted by expensive agencies that work with big brands, and don’t realize these agencies might not be able to help a small business that’s ROI focused. Simply put: don’t blow your budget on your website, but do your research to ensure you’re receiving a quality product.

5. Stale, out-of-date content.

Customers expect your website to contain the latest information about your products, services, and company. When it doesn’t have this, they may assume you’re not in business any longer, or simply aren’t innovative and ahead of the competition. Your content must address the needs of your customers (or potential customers) and be updated as things change. If you have a blog, updating it at least once a week — if not more — can help you drive visitors to your website and keep search engines happy.

Additionally, avoid putting links to your Facebook or Twitter pages if you only have a small following. People may think your business is too small and end up not hiring you.

6. Trying to target everyone.

This goes back to knowing your target market; your website will be a mess if you try to accommodate every kind of visitor you might end up getting. It’s best to figure out your most frequent users and focus on creating the best possible experience for them. If you try to please the masses you’ll likely end up not pleasing anyone.

7. Taking the DIY route.

Your website is often your customers’ first experience with your brand. If you don’t have design experience, do you really think you can do it justice? Remember first impressions are everything. Don’t allow your customer to make assumptions about your business because of a poorly designed website.

What do you think? What web design mistakes really drive you crazy?

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

A website is a website is a website, except when it’s a restaurant’s website. There’s something extra tricky about restaurant websites — they have to be cool, branded, creative, but also simple and clean. And the best ones capture all relevant information in just a few pages. There’s no need for deep websites with tons of clicks and pages.

At WittyCookie, we stare at restaurant websites all day. And when we’re not staring, we’re working with clients to help improve and refine their sites to maximize traffic and online orders. While there’s no doubt restaurant sites are complex beasts, our marketing team has assembled some proven best practices.

Homepage:
Your website is only as good as your homepage, period. It’s just like when people judge a book by its cover, but worse because it costs you customers.

Photos: Beautiful, enticing, high quality photography goes a long way. If you don’t have professional photography already, find a friend with a nice camera and a good eye and stage a shoot of your most delicious looking plates. It’ll pay off in dividends.

Above the fold: Make sure the action/most important information is happening in the top half of the screen. People are lazy and don’t like to scroll.

Navigation menu: Getting around your site should be intuitive. Pages should have generic/industry wide titles like: menu, order online, about us, reservations, contact. Example: Marcello’s Pizza and Pasta.

Ask for emails: Customer emails are like gold for a restaurant owner. Create a field for customers to “stay in touch” by entering their contact information. Example: Dragonfly Mandarin.

Location: Make your address clear on the homepage, and as a footer on all pages. Link to a Google Map so directions are easy and highlight any special instructions like where to park or valet. Example: Coral Tree Cafe.

Hours: State your hours clearly. If you’re open every day for all meal times, this is less important. But if you’re closed every Wednesday, avoid an angry customer and tell them before they make the trip. Update for holidays too!

Reservations:
Chances are a decent percent of your web traffic comes from people who want to know about your reservations policy. Give them answers — and fast:

Reserving options: We advise our clients that if they choose to take reservations, give at least one other option besides a phone call. That could mean using an online service like Urbanspoon or accepting emailed requests.

No reservations: If you decide you don’t want to take reservations, that’s cool, but make it abundantly clear.

Menu:
All the restaurant owners we work with spend days, months, even years refining the content, flow, language and look of their hard copy menus — then we lose them in the transition to digital!

HTML: HTML menus are by far the best option, First, HTML menus are searchable, meaning that Google recognizes the words in the content, and pushes your website toward the top in organic searches. HTML menus are also mobile friendly.

Flash: There’s been a trend over the past decade to build Flash (Adobe) sites. Don’t do it! They’re annoying for customers since they load slowly or incompletely and since they’re like giant photos, none of the content on these sites is indexed by search engines.

Online ordering: Online ordering takes a static menu and turns it into a dynamic marketplace for your most engaged customers (those visiting your website). At ChowNow we harness the power of the three most effective channels for online orders: restaurant websites, Facebook and mobile apps. Example: Grey Block Pizza.

Promotions: If you have the same promotions each week, post the calendar and highlight each night’s specials.

Story:
Think of your website as one giant story — are you trying to convey a casual, laid back, cozy story or a loud rock and roll, drink beer out of the bottle type feel?

Chef/management: People love knowing a bit about who’s preparing their meal. Tell the story of how the restaurant came to be, where the chef went to culinary school, where the idea for the name came from — anything memorable and authentic. Example: Zelda’s Corner.

Farmers/ingredients: If you spring on seasonal, local or organic ingredients, your website is a great place to promote these special ingredients. Provide a brief description and a link to the farmer/purveyors website.

Social media:
Stay in touch with your customers by providing news and photos on a regular basis.

Blog: Have you considered starting one, or have you already? Blogs are a great way to engage with customers, give your SEO a boost and share news. Example: Ocho Mexican Grill.

Facebook/Twitter: Use the Facebook “like button” and Twitter icon to link to your social media pages so you can stay in touch with your website visitors long term.

Press: Create a page to house all your press hits. Include links to all online articles, logos of the publication and pull out quotes of the most complimentary content. Example: Huckleberry Cafe.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

In 1997, there were approximately 1 million websites, and 10 years later, there were 150 million. In 2007, there were about 1 million mobile websites, and the number is supposed to reach 150 million by 2017. It is clear that mobile friendly websites are going to increase exponentially in the years to come. The internet started on the PC but with more than 3 billion mobile phones being used world wide, we are soon approaching a time when many people’s first internet experience will be through a mobile device. These rapid changes have left the business world with no choice other than to adapt to them. With mobile devices taking over the place of the PC, not having a mobile friendly website is like committing business suicide.

People want information and services, and they want them fast. With the advancement in technology, it is possible for you to access this information and the services through your cell phones. Those companies that have not yet adapted to mobile may miss this opportunity to attract customers. It has become very important for companies to be able to cater to their customers over mobile phones. A mobile is the most personal form of communication and is becoming a powerful one as well. If you can capture a customer on their mobile, then you have them on all other platforms as well.

Why You Should Have a Mobile Friendly Site

Rise of the smart phones: Smartphones have become affordable over the past few years. Almost everyone is looking to buy one. These devices are excellent for hand held browsing. Since the sale of smart phones is increasing, it only makes sense for companies to have a site that can be easily browsed through on these devices.

Popularity of mobile internet: According to studies, about 40% of the people who have a mobile phone use it for going online, and half of them will go online at least once every day. This presents a huge opportunity for a business.

Inexpensive option: Because mobile screens are a lot different from computer screens, the site design has to change accordingly. It is a relatively cheap process and not very time consuming either.

Use of GPS: GPS is a very useful technology. It is used by many mobile users to find out necessary things or directions. They also use it to find nearby services or businesses. If there is no mobile site available for your business then you are potentially losing a customer right in your own area.

Don’t get beaten by competition: People love to browse while traveling. However, when they find that sites that they normally used at their PCs are not mobile compatible, they might end up switching to a site which provides similar services and is mobile compatible as well.

SEO: Having a mobile friendly website also helps in SEO as it helps improve rankings on mobile friendly search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Compatible with all platforms, unlike mobile apps: The alternative to mobile friendly site is producing apps that perform similar functions. Now this can be a very tedious task. Making an app is also quite expensive and apart from that, you would have to make different apps for different platforms. Once you make these apps, they have to fight hundreds of thousands of other apps to get into the spotlight.

2D Bar codes: One great bonus that comes along with mobile friendly websites is the 2D bar code. These appear like regular bar codes, but are capable of so much more. They can be used for discounts. A customer takes a picture of the code with their cell phone and instantly has access to not only the details, but also reviews of the product before they buy it.

Better user experience: Earlier, it might not have been possible to make a mobile site and give the user a good enough experience because of the low bandwidth and server speeds. However, in recent times, this has changed and you can be assured that using a good mobile site will be an enriching experience for a user.

Within a span of three years, the number of people accessing the internet via mobile will be more than those accessing it via a PC. This, more than anything else, should be a clear indication for you to start working on the mobile version of your site. Apart from that, the biggest draw on the internet today are social networking websites. Many people access these websites through there mobile devices. If they come across a link to your site, they would want to view it on their mobile screens.

Things to Keep in Mind

There are numerous reasons for you to have a mobile version of your site. Mobiles are the device of choice for many people today, and you would want to be accessible to them. However, while making mobile sites, you need to keep certain things in mind. People use mobiles for browsing because they want to save time. If a site takes too long to load, then there is no point of a mobile user visiting that site. You need to keep the page size small enough so it is loaded quickly on cellular networks.

Often the problem of text size also crops up. It is not a good idea to cram the most information you can in one page. Mobile screens are small and it becomes difficult to read a lot of text. Also clicking on links becomes a difficult task. Make sure that the content of your page can be viewed easily and the site can be navigated easily as well.

If you are not someone who is surfing the net from your mobile, then you will soon be in minority. In the near future, most people will be using a mobile phone for browsing. This means that any business that has a presence on the internet right now should make appropriate changes so that its website is mobile friendly.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Unlike your shop front, office or warehouse, your website remains conveniently open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and allows you to reach local, interstate and international clients. A good website also enables your small business to compete on the same footing as much bigger organisations; and it helps shape customer perceptions of your business.

Why is a good website so important?

A good website can be a powerful, dynamic resource for a small business, giving you an online presence that can be seen by millions of potential customers.

The benefits of having a website will vary depending on the nature of your business, and the extent to which you choose to utilise available technologies. A website can help grow your business through:

1. Improving your brand reputation – The look and feel of your website and a good or satisfying user’s experience can help instil a level of trust in your business with customers and prospects and establish you as credible and professional. The internet also offers the opportunity for a small business to portray itself as or comparable to a big business and thereby compete on a more level playing field.

2. Cost effective marketing and promotions – A website enables you to promote your business more cost effectively and in a more sustainable long term way than through more traditional offline methods. You have ability to update add to and change your content with minimal additional cost, reach a wide audience, capture and build a database of leads, conduct market research and generate interest through hosting competitions and promotions.

3. Market expansion – A website can be accessed anywhere, any time. This means a vast number of potential customers can find and reach you, even on a global scale, without overhead costs and infrastructure needed to set up a bricks and mortar presence in those markets.

4. Selling while you sleep – Because the internet never turns off, your website enables you to increase your hours of operation.

5. Add value and satisfaction – You can use your website to provide additional value to customers by offering them product information, tips, advice and general interest content that can inform and entertain.

6. Reduce cost of sale and processing – Many of the overheads associated with making sales to customers face to face can be reduced when selling online giving favourable economies of scale.

What works? Desirable website attributes

Site visitors on average will only spend a few seconds on your site before deciding whether or not to move on. This is why it is important to know and follow best practices for website design and to know what customers consider as desirable attributes in terms of content, functionality and interactivity.

Note: some of these factors will be universal in nature and some may be very specific to the industry in which you operate. You need to know about and address both.

Much research has been conducted into what users want from a website. If you have the time you can delve in detail into many aspects of design and content such as the optimal font size to use and the order and placement of various items and functionality. Below is a summary of the most common findings from the many studies on this topic:

1. Personalization – this is when a website treats each visitor as an individual, recognises visitors when they revisit and delivers information based on the visitor’s preferences (this is done technically through user registration and login, cookies, customisation of dashboards, etc). Personalisation enables greater targeting of information, increases relevance and enhances the user experience.

2. Interactivity – empowers users with the ability to determine what, how, when and why they consume content as well as the ability to create their own content. Interactivity not only enhances the user experience, but also encourages users to contribute to your brand, forging stronger and more loyal relationships. Some studies show that the higher the degree of interactivity, the higher the website’s attractiveness and that the level of interactivity can be important when trying to convert site visitors from “lookers” to “buyers”.

3. Informativeness – this refers to the degree of useful the information provided is perceived by the user. Is it what they were looking for? Is it easy to understand? Does it address their question of “what’s in it for me”? In other words, how your offering will benefit them.

Increasing the usefulness and relevance of site content can be done simply through providing product /services support information, contact details, regularly refreshing content, removing expired information, including relevant keywords so user can quickly determine the relevance to their search and a clear ‘call to action’ so the customer understands what the next steps are.

4. Navigation – refers to how easily users can find what they are looking for. Generally speaking, the more complex and difficult a site is to navigate, the lower the user’s attitude towards the site.

5. Privacy and security – this relates to how customer and transaction data is collected, processed and used. Ideally, websites should provide security and privacy statements, secure payment gateways and have full disclosure statements for warranty, returns policy and liabilities.

6. Entertainment – many researchers have suggested that the effectiveness of a website can depend on how well it engages the attention of visitors by being fun, exciting, enjoyable or entertaining. This can also encourage visitors to continuously return to the site and spend longer exploring the rest of the site.

7. Accessibility – is the ease by which visitors can reach the site. Factors such as poor download speeds and long lag time can be a source of irritation for users, which then may also reflect negatively on your brand and offering.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

It isn’t all it takes, but these five essentials will help you build a solid base and become one of the small businesses that succeeds.

Leading a small business can be more stressful than raising children or maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse. Here are some basic principles to get you started on a sane journey toward growth.

When John Mackey and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson opened a vegetarian food store in their Austin, Texas home 34 years ago, nobody–including the couple themselves–would have dubbed him an entrepreneur. Today, a clean-shaven Mackey is most likely unrecognizable to patrons of the bearded college dropout’s first shop. He built his venture into the $15.5 billion Whole Foods empire, with more than 300 supermarkets that boast organic and grass-fed meats along with an array of vegetarian fare.

Few will ever rise to the ranks of Mackey, who made the cut for Fortune’s 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time. Mackey created a repeatable process of selling high quality natural and organic products in communities with the right appetite for a brand that relies on customer affinity. It takes a combination of understanding market demand and market size and having repeatable processes to support that market to have a scalable business. And Mackey had to strive to sustain innovation in a world where even Walmart peddles organic foods.

So many business founders come up with a good idea, yet they are unable to scale their companies for growth. Through my own journey as an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that every business is unique, but there are certain key precepts to follow for success. The few that do succeed do so with unmatched focus, discipline, and unconventional thinking.

Although it takes more than just this to be a success in business, here are five essential principles that you can begin implementing right away as you begin your journey toward growing your business:

1. Timing is everything.The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. Mackey bit on the organic and natural food revolution just as the public’s palate for these products oozed into the mainstream, but if the market isn’t ready and you are way ahead of the market, then you must possess the drive and the willingness to sacrifice in order to make that product or service work.

You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you’ll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market’s current readiness.

Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers’ needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires leadership with agility, resilience, and a willingness to fail–and to recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.

2. Brand, brand, brand.Today’s economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners, like Mackey has, or customers will turn to a competitor in search of a better experience. Whole Foods shoppers are loyal and believe they are embracing a healthy and socially conscious lifestyle by shopping at the stores. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth.

Here are some basic rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:

Choose your target audience. The surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.

Connect with the public. Your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand. Be sure to have a stunning website.

Inspire and influence your audience. An inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.

Reinforce the brand image within your company. Make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.

3. Scale your sales.Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn’t enough. It takes repeatable sales processes to create a scalable business. It is one thing to sign up a few customers; it is another thing entirely to identify, design, and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You’ve created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:

You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.

You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.

Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.

Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.

Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.

A repeatable sales model builds the platform to scale. Like the search for product/market fit, it can take major experimentation/R&D to find a repeatable and scalable sales model.

4. Embrace technology.Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of the recent Bank of America (BofA) Small Business Owner Survey respondents said they wish they took better advantage of technology innovations to help manage their business. If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with wireless can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.

5. De-stress for success.Most small business owners consider managing the ongoing success of their business to be twice as stressful as maintaining a healthy relationship with a spouse or partner, nearly three times as stressful as raising children, and more than four times as stressful as managing their own personal finances, according to the same Bank of America report mentioned earlier. The survey indicates that small business owners routinely forgo physical fitness and other personal priorities to keep up with business demands. Thirty-eight percent of small business owners maintain full or part-time jobs while running their own business.

The stressors can be relentless. But if you’re not happy, healthy, and motivated, you can’t create a business model that provides a positive market experience. You also set the tone for everyone who works with you. Nobody wants to do business with a grouchy, bitter, and exhausted owner. Therefore, investing the time and effort to adequately take care of your physical and mental well-being will further increase your chances for long-term success. Mental health is not just about going to the gym to let off steam. It’s about achieving a state of mental calmness to see you though the relentless challenges–but that’s another topic in itself!

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Banner ads and print ads can be expensive. And they are not necessarily the best way to advertise your small or mid-size business. So to find how to get the greatest return on your advertising investment, Small Business Computing surveyed small business owners. Below are 10 of their top suggestions for how to advertise on a budget.

“AdWords and PPC [pay-per-click] can give you crazy amounts of traffic if you are tight with your campaign and run niche ad groups,” explained Andrew Riker an SEO specialist at WordStream. “Focused, long-tail keywords that are specific to your industry will cause the highest possible click-through rate and in-turn conversions.”

Riker adds that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a lot of traffic. “A small daily budget — $10-$20/day — can provide you with a large amount of traffic and in turn qualified leads, as long as the ad is relevant,” he said.

“We tried print ads and banner ads, but for our money Facebook ads provide us with the most focused consumers,” explained Chris Knollmeyer, Web manager for Carolina Rustica. “Being able to target specific demographics lets us pinpoint people we have not reached yet and provides us with a platform to reach out to them. This kind of targeting allows us to minimize extemporaneous clicks from consumers [who are] just browsing or searching for information and gets us the most for our money.”

“Facebook ads have definitely been the most successful overall,” concurred Megan LaBant Abrahamsen, the owner of Blue Star Bazaar. “I can set a small budget (less than $10 per day) and target specific customers – [by] age, gender, education and interests similar to my product categories.”

Even if people don’t immediately make a purchase because of the Facebook ad, many of them wind up “liking” her business, she said, which lets Blue Star Bazaar create a database of potential customers.

“One of the best ways to advertise and get traffic to your website is by using StumbleUpon ads [StumbleUpon Paid Discovery],” noted Chris Wise, the online marketing director at CustomerRave. “They cost as little as $0.05 a click, so for $5 you can get 100 unique visitors to your site. While the bounce rate is more often than not higher when using these ads, it’s a great way to advertise contests, giveaways and big promotions,” he said.

And if the content you are promoting proves to be popular and receives a lot of “likes,” you will start receiving free traffic from Stumbles, which can go on for months, even after you have stopped advertising.

“In exchange for the content, they allow you to include a couple of back links to your website. Not only does this provide you with potential traffic and leads to your business, it also helps establish you as an expert in your related field,” said Kostanecki. Can’t come up with a subject to write about? He suggests asking your customers about their biggest pains and problems.

5. Donate Products or Volunteer Services to a Worthy Cause

“I got the equivalent of $1,000 in advertising by building the website for the Rhode Island Rally for Recovery,” explained Benjamin John Coleman, founder of The Origami Bonsai Company. And his investment of time really paid off — resulting in $5,000 in new business. That’s because when other vendors who participated in the Rally saw what a great job his company did building and maintaining the Rally website, they hired Coleman to help them with their websites.

6. Cultivate Bloggers

“Find influential bloggers in your industry and ask them to review your product or service,” suggested Daniel Weaver, the president and owner of Daniel’sPromise. “Many will be happy to do so if you give them free product for them to use.”

That’s what Juppy, the maker of the Juppy Baby Walker, did. “When we started out, our company we didn’t have a lot of cash on hand to spend on advertising,” explained Mayra Sotelo, the COO for Juppy. “So we decided to seek out mom bloggers who would review The Juppy Baby Walker. This worked out great for us…because there is no better [endorsement of] our baby walker that fits in a purse than by a real mom who loves our product.”

And if you can’t find a blogger who will review and write about your product for free, there are also bloggers “who will write about your site/product/company in exchange for a fee,” noted Mike Scanlin, CEO of Born To Sell. And even with a fee, that kind of endorsement is typically more effective and less expensive than a banner ad.

7. Claim Local Listings on Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local

“You’d be amazed at how many small businesses forget to sign up for services like Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local even though it’s free!” explained Mandy Boyle, the SEO manager for Solid Cactus. “Claim your local listing, fill out the information and take advantage of people searching for businesses in your area,” she advised.

8. Use Community Sites and Local Directories

“Community-based online networks [such as Thumbtack and Quentin’s Friends] are a great way to cost-effectively get the word out about your business to a more targeted group,” explained Dana Leavy, CEO ofAspyre Solutions.

Leavy uses a site called Quentin’s Friends, an invitation-only network where members can post recommendations and offers for their products and services for a very small fee ($15). “The service is location-specific, so my ad is going out to thousands of people who are specifically in my geographic area, New York,” she said. And Leavy’s return on investment has been an impressive 6,500 percent.

If you own a B2B company, a good way to reach your target audience is through LinkedIn advertising, “We are a small business and our target market is small business users,” explained Damian Raffele, vice president, marketing, AnyMeeting.

LinkedIn Ads has worked well for the company, because it allows them to target a specific audience by geography, demographics, job title or LinkedIn Group. “Being able to target users who belong to specific LinkedIn Groups… allows us to design ad copy that is tailored for them, which has resulted in great conversion rates, providing us with a great ROI on our marketing spend.”

10. Distribute Flyers

“If you have a small business that focuses on a particular area, flyers are a great way to advertise,” said Nathan Letourneau, co-founder of CampusBooks4Less. And they needn’t be expensive. Chances are you have someone in your company, or a friend or family member, who can help you design the flyer inexpensively (or for free) – and you can print the flyer in house or find an inexpensive printer.

As for distribution, “hire some high school or college students and have them put the flyers on parked cars, attach them to house entry doors and distribute them inside area businesses (to employees and on any bulletin boards, if allowed) and apartment complexes,” he advised. “We saw huge increases in traffic after having students distribute flyers on parked cars in our target areas.”

While not every method will work for every business, each advertising strategy is inexpensive enough that you should be able try a few to find out what works for you. Also, many of the sites mentioned, such as Google AdWords and Facebook, periodically offer advertising credits or discounts, which small business owners should use to their advantage.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.